On the Moraine, Part XXXIX
By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist
Keeping warm in the winter: I have mentioned before that we largely heated with wood when we lived on the farms. Of course, just living there on weekends, as we did in our part time years on the McNary farm, took considerably less wood than living full time on the Beaver Farm.
I think it was Thanksgiving 1963 that we had an early snow, probably six inches or so, and Dad had planned we would cut wood on Thanksgiving Day. So, it was off to the woods in a heavy snow.
Our tools consisted of a 26-inch David Bradley chain saw, which has been mentioned in this column over the years many times. There were bow saws, axes, wedges and log chains involved in this process as well.
We also had a 30-inch circular saw blade which manifest it self in several setups over the years. First, it was mounted on a permanent mandrel behind the woodshed at the McNary farm. In this case, one brought a trailer load of branches to it, sawed them up and pitched them through the broken window to the operator’s right, directly into the woodshed.
Its next appearance was mounted on a wooden frame on the front of our first John Deere Model A, in which case you could take it directly to the source of the branches.
Then finally, Dad made a more elaborate frame and mounted it on the front end of the Case SC which we had bought from George Lucas.
This circular saw blade never had a guard and often we were using it in snowy or icy conditions. No one ever got even a nick from it. I am not proposing to operate in such an unsafe manner, just pointing out we were very, very fortunate. It was often operated in conditions that were snowy or even had ice on the ground.
If Mother had ever come to the woods and seen what we were doing, I expect that would have been the end of that.
I do remember working on this one snowy Thanksgiving, however. There was a sugar maple woods (still there) that was adjacent to the Head’s farm to the east. It was in our pasture on the Beaver Farm.
It had many very large sugar maples (probably 30 inches in diameter) that were hollow in the center.
We would cut one down, then start cutting it into blocks 18-20 inches long. You could put these flat on the ground break them with an axe and then start around them with the axe as if you were slicing a pie.
A very quick way to get a trailer load of wood.
This was probably the most dangerous thing we did all year – cut firewood. And again, fortunately, no one was ever hurt.
Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.